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When it comes to our democracy, the best insight I ever received was not from a book or lecture. Rather, it came from a merchant I was haggling with over a souvenir as I traveled in the Middle East some 20 years ago.

The old, haggard man said, "Why do you Americans complain about your government? It is actually your government. You own it. You can change it. We can't do that here."

Though voiced as a complaint, the man's comments are profound.

In much of the world, there is no democracy. Or if there is "democracy," it is democracy in name only.

Just check out Freedom House's annual survey that objectively tracks and ranks freedom around the globe. It classified countries as either "free," "partly free" or "not free." And one look at its world map shows that more real estate on our globe is still classified as "not free" or "partly free" than "free."

As we learn in grammar school, the opening words of the U.S. Constitution say it all: "We the people of the United States ..."

Note how it does not begin. It does not begin with "I, the King," or "Me, the dictator," or "They, the corporations," or even "Lord, our creator." But instead, "We the people."

The old man had it right.

"We the people" actually have the power to change our government. Though we've done our best to gum it up at times, the structure is all there for change. All it takes is "we the people."

Americans can actually sue their own government, and win! And openly protest the government. Try doing that in much of the rest of the world and let me know how it turns out.

It is why the U.S. has such an immigration problem: No matter all of our problems, more people want to come here it's still the land of opportunity than anywhere else.

Of course, some might dismiss this thought as naive. After all, have you seen how special interests, corporations, computers, the press, "fake news," foreign countries and even Kim Kardashian control so many aspects of our lives?

But they only control us to the extent we allow them to do so. That, too, is a choice.

Our democracy is hardly perfect, but it was never intended to be. What makes it unique and enduring is that it was set up with the ability to adapt, to change. No coups or revolutions required.

Just as Barack Obama came out of virtual nowhere to lead our democracy, so, too, did Donald Trump. One was born of modest means and the other massive means, but so what? In both cases "we the people" elected them and made it happen. No party or person has a monopoly on our government. Instead, "we the people" do.

And therein lies the beauty. Whether it's voting, fighting a bogus parking ticket, attending a local zoning meeting or running for president, if Obama and Trump could do it, so can you.

So no matter where you may fall on the political spectrum, and no matter how frustrated you might grow at times, remember the old man, who today still could say: "It is your government. You actually own it. Or can."

William Choslovsky, a Chicago lawyer, loved democracy until he was recently defeated in his run for a third term on his local school council.

Continued here:
We the people have a democracy to celebrate - Chicago Tribune

On Friday June 16, a St. Paul, Minn., jury acquitted police Officer Jeronimo Yanez of Philando Castile's murder. Tuesday is July Fourth. I hope the connection and contradiction are obvious.

July Fourth commemorates U.S. independence, but more importantly it celebrates America's claim to democracy. Thus, July 4, 2017, is an excellent time to seriously contemplate this assertion.

Over the last eight months, liberal pundits have routinely commented on the state of "American democracy." They largely lament the fascist Donald Trump's impact on America's "democratic" ideals and institutions. Most, like the New York Times' Steven Livitsky and Daniel Ziblatt stress Trump's authoritarian tendencies. Because of his propensity to place self-interest above the common good, they see Trump as a threat to U.S. "democratic" institutions and traditions. Given Trump's refusal to comply with accepted norms and his attacks on the First Amendment, he certainly is dangerous.

A few commentators, like the Atlantic's Eric Liu, counterintuitively speculate that Trump's anti-democratic behavior is the best antidote to Americans' apathy. Liu believes Trumpism will revitalize civic organizations and revive citizenship among a dispirited and indifferent population. The upsurge in marches and civil disobedience against Trump's further erosion of democratic procedures suggest Liu is right, at least in the short run.

Yet, it seems to me that both views skirt the serious issues surrounding America's declaration of democracy. Pundits erroneously discuss the danger Trump poses to democratic processes without critiquing the defective nature of those "democratic" principles and practices. To a huge extent Trump's authoritarianism helps expose the myth. The country's collective historical amnesia or willful mystification facilitates Americans' unawareness or rejection of the truth about the red, white and blue.

African-Americans and other oppressed people have never had that luxury. We live on the underside of U.S. society, at the bottom of the well. From our vantage point, American democracy is a lightly scented perfume that fails to camouflage the US' putrid odor. At best the U.S. is a Herrenvolk democracy (a democracy for the white majority). But as the history labor and the poor attest this is a generous assessment. Knowing the hypocrisy of America, we darker people have made critique of its democratic pretensions a cottage industry.

In the title song on her 2016 CD, "Red, White and Blue," the neo-blues artist Sunny War sings, "Red, White and Blue/They are coming for you/From sea to shining sea/Jesus sings democracy/Been running our world like a business/Leaving our earth buried in sin/Doing it all for the dollar/Killing our world and dying with it/Red, White and Blue/They will get you too."

War's lyrics reflect the African-American tradition of critically appraising America's claim to democracy and prophesying its future punishment. Her lyrics link her to a line of African-American freedom fighters that includes people like David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ella Baker, Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, Assata Shakur and Jamil Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown).

Perhaps more than any other commentary, War's song, "Red, White and Blue," recalls Frederick Douglass' "What to the Slave is the 4th of July?" In that talk, Douglass answered for enslaved African-Americans. He replied, July Fourth is "a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham ... your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery ... your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages."

Douglass' response is as relevant today as it was in 1852. The form of racial oppression has changed but contemporary U.S. blacks remain subjugated.

Some of you will applaud Douglass' assessment of the U.S. during antebellum slavery but most of you will find my connecting his evaluation to the present unnuanced, harsh, perhaps ungrateful, and maybe even absurd. Yet, if the measure of America's limited notion of liberal democracy is the equal protection of human and civil rights, especially the right to choose one's elected officials without restriction. If that's the criteria, then African-Americans have and continue to exist under a form of tyranny.

Contemporary voter suppression is eerily similar to the "colorblind" policies and laws used to disfranchise blacks during the nadir (1877-1920s) and well into the 1960s.

The 115th Congress is the most diverse in US history; yet, the African-American members (49 representatives and three senators) still constitute only 10.5 and 3 percent, even though black folks comprise over 13 percent of the U.S. population.

Meanwhile, the police kill more blacks yearly than were lynched in any given year.

A jury acquitted police Officer Jeronimo Yanez of Philando Castile's murder and Tuesday we celebrate American democracy.

For me, July Fourth 2017, will remind me that the U.S. continues to perform crimes of control that would dishonor a totalitarian society.

Sundiata Cha-Jua is a professor of African-American studies and history at the University of Illinois and is a member of the North End Breakfast Club. His email is schajua@gmail.com.

Read more here:
Sundiata Cha-Jua/Real Talk: July 4: Commemoration of democracy? - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette

Photo: James Kegley, Photographer

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post Writer's Group

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post Writer's Group

WASHINGTON - "Some of the Fake News Media likes to say that I am not totally engaged in healthcare," President Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday. "Wrong, I know the subject well & want victory for U.S."

Fine, Mr. President, there's an easy way to prove your asserted knowledge: Have a news conference. Answer questions that aren't softballs tossed by your friends at Fox News.

In the age of Trump, some of the president's deviations from democratic and political norms slap you in the face. Attacks on federal judges for decisions that don't go his way. Attacks on news organizations for stories that portray him in a bad light. Misstatement piled on misstatement. Nepotism run amok. Transparency abandoned, from disclosure of tax returns to release of White House visitor records.

But other shifts, equally audacious and equally troubling, take a more subtle form. They unfold slowly until, perhaps too late, the change becomes blindingly apparent. So it is with Trump's dealings with the media, and the effective disappearance of public accountability. Authoritarianism does not announce itself. It creeps up on you.

The president has had a single formal news conference - in February, 168 days after his previous such encounter with the media. At this point in their presidencies, Barack Obama had held seven; George W. Bush three; Bill Clinton seven; George H.W. Bush 15.

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Like his predecessors, Trump has also answered a few questions at joint news conferences with foreign leaders - although Trump has had a smaller number of such events than his predecessors and, unlike them, has made a habit of directing questions to friendly conservative news outlets. Until, that is, Monday's joint appearance with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at which the leaders of the world's two largest democracies took zero questions.

And so, all the fuss over whether the regular White House press briefing will be televised misses the more fundamental point of presidential inaccessibility. The practice of live on-camera briefings is far better, but it's not as if this practice is chiseled in stone; it didn't start until the Clinton administration.

The medium is not the message - the message is. What's more important than video is having spokesmen capable of speaking with authority on the president's positions - not the relentless incuriosity of Trump's flacks, who seem never to have gathered his thoughts on topics from Russian hacking to climate change.

What's more important is having spokesmen who use the briefing as more than a platform for irresponsible media-bashing, such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders' magnificently ironic complaint about "the constant barrage of fake news directed at this president," followed by approvingly citing ("whether it's accurate or not, I don't know") an anti-CNN video by fake news huckster James O'Keefe.

And what's most important is the opportunity to question the president himself. A president automatically commands airtime; this president, through his Twitter feed, automatically commands attention. But publicity without accountability is the antithesis of democracy. Reporters questioning elected officials serve in this sense as surrogates for the public.

Remember back when Trump and his campaign were busy blasting Hillary Clinton for failing to hold a news conference.

As for other ways in which Trump has made himself accessible, or not? Well, he went 41 days between interviews - from May 13 with Fox News' Jeanine Pirro ("Your agenda is not getting out, because people are caught up on the (James) Comey issue, and ridiculous stuff") to June 23 with Fox News' Ainsley Earhardt (on Trump's bogus suggestion there might be tapes of Comey, she said, "It was a smart way to make sure he stayed honest in those hearings").

But Pirro and Earhardt looked like Woodward and Bernstein compared to "Fox and Friends'" Pete Hegseth, who pummeled Trump on June 25 with questions like "Who's been your biggest opponent? Has it been Democrats resisting, has it been fake-news media, has it been deep-state leaks?"

Wow. Who's a snowflake now?

This isn't journalism - it's a pillow fight. And the beauty of submitting to this faux-interviewing is its perfect circularity: Trump gets to make his remarks, coddled by Fox. Then White House press secretary Sean Spicer, with the cameras not rolling, gets to cite them as a shield against providing further information: "I believe that the president's remarks on 'Fox and Friends' this morning reflect the president's position."

Is this what our democracy has been reduced to? We in the media can't make Trump take our questions. But supinely accepting his silence threatens to normalize the distinctly abnormal.

Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.

See more here:
Marcus: A healthy democracy demands transparency - Houston Chronicle

This week Sandy and our two dogs will put on red, white, and blue and walk in our Castle Heights annual Fourth of July parade. My mom who lives down the street, and is disabled, will sit on her front porch swing to watch the 300 or so of our neighbors pass by her flag-lined yard. It makes our hearts sing to celebrate America with friends of all political stripe Libertarians, Republicans, Independents, Democrats and Green Party folks.

For one brief moment we will be reminded of our shared destiny while together we eat hot dogs and homemade ice cream at the Castle Heights Circle.

Ive noticed over the years at these important moments that speakers will often give thanks and appreciation to our men and women in uniform across the country and the world. This is certainly appropriate. But Ive also wondered why we rarely mention other patriots who are serving in non-military roles. They too protect our freedom, advance democracy and contribute essential to the development of our country.

Consider the role that school teachers, judges, city council members, police officers, fire-fighters, Peace Corp workers, foreign service officers and others play in preserving our freedom and advancing democracy. Occasionally, there will be a nod to one group of these dedicated public servants who are necessary to the health and well-being of our civil society. But rarely, if ever, have I heard thanks given to our journalists for the paramount role they play.

Wait, did I just write journalists? Do journalists have as important a role in our democracy as that of soldiers? Are journalists patriots? Are they just as important as our elected representatives? A recent Pew survey poll (March 13-27) suggests that some Americans would find an affirmative answer to these questions to be preposterous. The study indicates that Democrats and Republicans, who already tend to place their trust in different news sources and rely on different outlets for political news, now disagree more than ever on a fundamental issue of the news medias role in society: whether news organizations criticism of political leaders primarily keeps them from doing things they shouldnt or keeps them from doing their job.

Anyone want to guess which side of the issue which party is on? The survey reveals that 9 in 10 Democrats believe that the news media keeps politicians in line by serving a watchdog role. Only 4 in 10 Republicans can affirm this. While there are likely multiple reasons why Americans are divided on this issue, I would suggest that history is on the side of those who see journalists having an essential role in our democratic process.

Let me offer 5 key responsibilities of journalists that probably cannot be done by anyone else.

While there is much to be discouraged today in regards to media empires that seem to have profit or political influence as their focus, on this Fourth of July, perhaps more than any in recent memory, we should we must remember the contributions by the great journalists of our day Bob Woodward, James Baldwin, Christiane Amanpour, Walter Cronkite, Margaret Bourke-White, Dan Rather, Carl Bernstein, Ed Bradley, Bill Moyers and Anna Quindlen who protect our freedom. And remember and be grateful for our local journalists who served Central Texas through the print, television and radio forums.

Thomas Jefferson felt so strongly about the role of journalists that he made the following well-known pronouncement: If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. God bless America and God bless our journalists.

Blake Burleson is an ordained Baptist minister and a faculty member in the Department of Religion at Baylor University. The fifth-generation Texan enjoys carpentry, painting, backpacking and travel. This column marks his first as a member of the Trib Board of Contributors.

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Blake Burleson, Board of Contributors: Journalism necessary part of American democracy - Waco Tribune-Herald

NBC 29 News

Democracy Vineyards Celebrates July 4 with 'Birth of Democracy' NBC 29 News A Nelson County vineyard is starting off the Independence Day weekend with a blind test that pits Democracy versus Trump. Most Popular Videos · Tom Sox Shut out Covington 9-0 for 7th Straight Win. The Charlottesville Tom Sox shut out Covington 9-0 ... and more »

Link:
Democracy Vineyards Celebrates July 4 with 'Birth of Democracy' - NBC 29 News